Un Noël International!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!  I so miss everyone and wish everybody the very best holiday season.  Just a little note:  yes, I did work on Christmas Day :(  But thanks to Hangout and Skype, I'm now having video sessions with loved ones back home in between blurts of writing this blog.

As for my fellow management team, we stay connected with WhatsApp - It has to be the most popular App in the world as texting is not unlimited everywhere else like it is in North America.  It's kinda cool to have co-workers off for their Christmas vacation in all parts of the world:  Sabi is back home in Berlin and sent us a video message of a light show he attended (attached below) and John and his family who hail from Louisiana are holidaying in Iceland and posted pictures of the northern lights and icebergs.  Who goes to iceland in the middle of winter!!

Kevin and Eduardo are still on duty with me, so to get some sense of Christmas, we participated in a InterNation Christmas supper at The Steakhouse in Jubail last night.  21 people from 9 different countries.  The majority were doctors from both Greece and Portugal.  Small World Moment: I sat beside Dmitry (Jimmy the Greek) from Alberta!  Coincidently, he was born in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan (my High School town) and works in the camp industry and knows my friend, Gary Fortier, who is also in that industry in Canada.  He's pictured with his wife Victoria from Ukraine below.

Cheers and have one on me as KSA is a dry country!

Work Hard, Play Hard

It was a very busy week in which many things progressed forward...I had not even an ounce of energy when the evening came on Thursday (my Friday.)

Got my Iqama!! (the resident card that without it you basically don't exist here.) That opened the way to getting many other things: adding the multi-entry visa (to come and go from the Kingdom), setting up the bank account, and applying for a local driver's license.  Leading up to that, I needed to enroll in the Saudi Engineering Council and get proof of my new medical insurance.  All this included a lot of running around!

At work, I got my new work laptop so I was able to start studying many of the documents, policies and procedures I need to familiarize myself with.  On top of that, every plant in our area (depending how you count them, there's 12!) is in some stage of starting up with typical start-up issues.  In addition, we started interviewing for the 5 superintendent roles which are currently being filled by Dow Secondees (2 x from Brazil, 1 from France, 1 from Russia and 1 from India.) who are slated to leave at some point in 2017.  There is no time to get bored!

So to fit in a day of rest and recreation today was very nice.  I've hooked up with the InterNations expat network here who organize activities of all sorts.  The one that caught my attention and that took place today was a paragliding event that happened to in the desert really close to Jubail.  I'll let the videos and pictures do the talking on this one.  Thanks to Omar Wani from India for organizing the event today.

Canada Geese of a Feather Flock Together

A big thank-you to my Canadian friends here in the Eastern Province who extended a big welcome over these past few weekends and shared their knowledge and experience of the area with me.  It will certainly help get my adventure get started in the right direction.   All of them have been here 2+ years, with some ending their work term soon and others willing to be here until the King and the Kingdom accept them.  They were all from the Edmonton/Fort Saskatchewan area before they moved here.

Picture #1:  Yes, that is a Tim Horton's!  It's in Old Town Jubail about a kilometer away from Alreem!  It was the first place the Canadians brought me!!  Who knew?!?!

Picture #2:  Had a nice sleep-over and beach day with the Dorward/Cyr family at their home on the Aramco compound in Dhahran.  As my mom used to say, I left something behind to give me reason to go back.  I look forward to some bike rides, triathlons, more beach days and Bahrain trips together.

Picture #3:  And to end this post, I have to point out Cathy's warped sense of humour - she thought it was very funny I had to follow to the family side as the women were with us.  The family side of the restaurant has a back alley entrance, curtained cubicles, run-down look and kids running and screaming all around.  On the contrasting side, the single (men's) side has a full glass front entrance, wide open spaces, modern look and very quiet surroundings.  Haha Cathy.

`

Meet Mohd Al-Jaber: "We don't take coffee breaks when we ride in KSA"

When I first set out to move to Saudi, I wondered if I could even ride anywhere in the country.  Initial stories were that it would be insane to ride on these roads where drivers commonly drive at 160kph and pass on both left and right shoulders!!

I then did a little research on Strava and soon started communicating with Mo.  He was KOM on few segments around Jubail and a few kudos later we exchanged email addresses and started talking everything cycling in Saudi.  He reassured me that cycling was alive and well here and probably the fastest growing sport.  He told me about the Riyadh Wheelers Club's race series in the capital every two weeks (but downside being that is 4 hours away), he also told me he would show me what roads were safe and the best times to ride on them when I got here, he let me know the best websites to order gear since there are no great bike stores around and I got my new trainer sent to his address, .

Well, I finally met Mo today.  I know a lot of cyclists and Mo's passion for cycling is right there with some of the best of 'em!!  He is relatively new to the sport (2013) and aspires to be the fastest guy in KSA.  Today, he was determined to do 160km without a coffee break today.  I set the goal of 120km and that's all I had in me after 2 months of celebrating before moving.  Well, that's what we did the 120km and we did have a coffee break.  I put the pictures of the ride in a GoPro Quik montage.

Here's an email exert of him describing his first road race last weekend, he is now on the Al-Salam team/club:

"The RR was amazing. It was my first RR ever, so I did not expect to do very well against guys who have been racing for years. First, the wind was BRUTLE! It was a very strong cross wind that day. Five guys from the same club got in the front and started riding hard from the start. Also, they were in echelon formation and trying to put everyone into the curb. I was able to break away with them. I hang up for about a lap until they finally dropped me. Then, I got into a chasing group of three. The gap was 1.30min and we started chasing. We could not catch them since one of the guys was skipping too many turns. However, we did get the gap down to 30sec at the end. I finished 7th, but that really does not matter. What matters to me is that I am about the same level as these guys, which is very motivating for me."

Finally, I did a little interview with him, here it is:

Meet Kevin

Since Jeremy Caissie asked for a VBlog...here's my first one:

10 facts about SADARA

The reason that brings me to the Kingdom (as people often refer to Saudi Arabia here) - it's the new Sadara complex in the Eastern Province, which hugs the Persian Gulf.  The place is massive!!  Basically,  everything is super-sized !  So much for everything being BIG in Texas.

1. The complex is comprised of 26 integrated operating plants that were built all at once.  The biggest undertaking of its kind for a petro-chemical complex ever!
2. Price tag: $20 Billion Dollars.
3. There were 60,000 people on-site at the peak of contruction!!! (2014-2015 time frame.)  Like someone pointed out: if everyone eats half a chicken a day that equals 210,000 chickens a week to feed this crew!
4. There are 4 separate envelopes on site: Isocyanates, Chemicals, Plastics and Hydrocarbons.
5. The project is a joint venture between Saudi Aramco (60%) and Dow (40%)
6. There were up to 600 Dow employees (known as Dow Secondees) helping during the design, commissioning, start-up and early operation phase of this mega project.  They are being released as the plants start up - currently there's about half that number.  Some fellow Dow Fort Saskatchewan employees were/are part of that.  (I'm not one of those but rather a Sadara direct employee to move in to the operating/long-term phase.)
7. Many of them feel very satisfied to have seen a sandy desert field turn into a world-scale operating complex.  They feel it they may never experience such a challenging experience ever again.  Not necessarily because of that, but many are retiring after this project.
8. As well, the project is also getting good support from Saudi Aramco including their influence with procurement of materials and customs issues.
9. Supposedly every major EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) firm in the world had a least a small hand with this project.
10. There's a neighboring large Value-Park planned next door to create next stage products from the Sadara products.  So the love continues!  The Saudi government has great expectations for Sadara and Value-Park creating many jobs for Saudi nationals.

Prayer Time

Notice to reader:  Before you read this post, know that I have all respect for the Saudi's prayer time.  Lots of good things can be said about prayer.  The world needs more prayer!!  Ok.  On with the blog:

You know you need to listen to your fellow expat's advise when you're told something at least 5 times in your first week. That advise was to install the Athan App on my phone so I know how to plan my Saudi life around prayer time.

Prayer time occurs six times per day and varies depending on the sunrise/sunset schedule. There's also supposed guidelines on how many mosques need to be built: one per 500 men and they need to be able to walk to it in 5 minutes or less. I've haven't validated these requirements but it makes for a good story.   There are a lot of mosques here - a few Jubail ones are pictured below.

They also have prayer rooms in lieu of mosques.  In a work environment, prayer rooms exist at several locations including right beside the Isocynates control room in my building. In public, I've seen one in the Fanateer mall.

Portions of these prayers are broadcast on loud speakers (beginning and end of it??).   Depending on where you are, you may hear prayers from several mosques. Cathy Williamson pointed out that we were hearing 3 or 4 different prayers at once as we were waiting for the restaurant to open after prayer time. Click here to hear a clip of a prayer I recorded as I was walking along the corniche (pathway by the water front) in the Fanateer area on Friday.

In the summer, I'm told your wake up alarm can be the prayer loud speakers at 3:30 if you happen to live by a mosque.  I think they put Alreem (the posh expat compound) in the middle of nowhere (well beside a dump) to keep us from shocking the locals - but as an outcome of that, I do not hear these prayer loud speakers at Alreem.

As far as I can tell, the way life operates around prayer time is this.  If you happen to be in a store or restaurant at prayer time, they either ask you to leave, put the window coverings down, dim the lights and close down the cashiers.  You can most of the time stop, there's just no service.  It seems to last anywhere from 20-30 minutes.  Couple this with the fact that there's a closure period between 12pm and 4pm, it's hard to get this accomplished here.  At work, prayer time is available to the muslims but it hasn't interupted any activities I've been involved with yet.  That being said, if the taxi driver knows I'll be waiting for several minutes, he'll ask if he can go sneak in a prayer while he waits.  So far, I've been stuck in Lulu's (Arabic equivalent of Walmart) waiting to pay for my groceries, asked to leave the Starbucks and we fit our supper date with my fellow Canadians between prayer time.  (FYI, we were having such a good time, we chatted right thru the second prayer.)

Welcome to the Sandbox

...and welcome to my blog about my adventures as an expat living in Saudi Arabia and working for Sadara.

One week is complete and the hardest part so far has been finding time to share all the amazing things I'm experiencing and seeing.  Of course the immediate loved ones are hearing from me, but this blog will allow me to expand further (before you all forget about me!!).  In addition, I think it will be pretty cool to have this documented and be able to look back on how things have transpired.

In short, this week can be summarized as one in which I was welcomed here with open arms: 1) By the country: there were no border horror stories at immigration or customs.  2) By my work team:  our team is composed of 140+ people including people from KSA, Brazil, Malaysia, USA, France, Phillipines, India, Pakistan, Germany, England and I'm sure I'm missing a few.  So many names and so many similar names!!  (Mohammed after Mohammeds) There will be more work and work-mate discussions in future posts.  3) By Fellow Canadian Expats:  I already have a few invitations!!  Later today Dave and Catherine Williamson will show me around the area and I will have supper with them.  Dave was a fellow reliability engineer with me at Dow in Fort Saskatchewan more than 15 years ago.  Next week I am invited by Danielle Cyr and Scott Dorward to celebrate an early Christmas before they head home.  The visit will include a sleep over complete with a visit of the beach the next day.  Danielle is a friend of my sister Chantal and her husband Scott is an engineer with Saudi Aramco who I knew back in Canada and rode on his 24 hours of Adrenaline mountain bike team in years past.

As for accommodations, I am in a very comfortable compound.  Its called Alreem and it's nicknamed Al-Dream.  It is spacious, clean, has excellent restaurants with excellent service, a beautiful gym, pool, tennis and basketball courts and a mini-market.  Supposedly, there are yoga classes given by a Canadian lady, Tania on Saturday mornings.  I'm currently in the hotel portion and I'm on the waiting list to get a 1-bedroom apartment. I visited the one of these apartments and they are top notch.  Housing is provided by the company but I do have the option of finding my own accommodation and "pocketing" the difference from the 25%-of-base-salary-allowance that is dictated by law.  It is an option I am exploring.

There are so many different things here!! I'm experiencing "culture shock" moments on a continual basis!!  Probably the most obvious is the attire of both men and women in public.  The formal wear of the men is the thobe and shemagh and for the women it is the abaya and hijab.   In public you will find maybe a quarter of the men dressed formally and probably 99% of the women dressed in their attire.  It's still shocking (is that the right word?), that you have these women all covered up and dressed ALL the same.  At the hospital, there was a separate admitting for men and women and it was cool (or is that the right word?) to see 20 or so covered up woman in one line up.  I've been warned that the Saudi people are very private and it would not be inappropriate to take any pictures of these interesting (maybe that's the right word?!) people.  So I will have to describe in writing to the best of my abilities.  They are dressed this way in all public places including the stores, the park and the restaurants.  There is one accessory I haven't mentioned yet that nearly all the women have....their cell phone.  Of course, like the North American culture many are on their cell phones as well but it was almost 100% for the women in the park yesterday.

The work week here is from Sunday to Thursday here.  Coupled with the fact that we are 10 hours ahead of Canada, I'm done my work week on Thursday morning on the Alberta clock!! Friday is the holy day and family day.  On Friday night, the parks fill up and there are picnics, people sitting around talking, many people walking on the paths.  The park I went to was near the Royal Commission in New Jubail.  I went to the same park in the morning (to cycle) and it was almost deserted.  In the evening there were 1000's of people.

I would say I'm extremely connected with a Saudi company phone (+966-53-908-2432), a Canadian texting number: 506-802-3764, a VOIP Canada voice number: 780-800-8198, Skype: rejean_lavoie, Skype Arizona phone number: 928-239-9319.

There's a few extra pictures on my Instagram feeds:  @expatrej and @bikersk8ter.
Thanks for reading and feel free to share with others.